Complete Guide to Google Vids (2026)

To get us started, go to vids.new and that's going to create a new Google Vids project and it will give you a few different options to choose from. You could get going with creating an actual video clip from scratch, an AI avatar, creating music as well. We'll cover all of those later on in this complete guide and don't forget you can use the chapters in the description to jump to the bit that you want to learn about. You could also convert from some slides if you've got a presentation that you want to turn into a video, that's a good way to start. You can record yourself which we'll look at later as well. Upload existing files, choose from tons of templates here that are already good quality and cover a whole range of use cases or you can even have Gemini storyboard a video for you based on a prompt. So just a few sentences to describe what you want, it will then create an outline for you and then you can build out from there. But what we're going to do is actually just create a blank vid because then I can show you everything you need to know about using Google Vids. So this is what Google Vids looks like. At the very top of the screen here, we've got a menu like you would normally see in any other editor and just underneath it a toolbar. By default that toolbar will show you things that are going to impact the whole project. So for example, you could click to change the video size from landscape to portrait or square which is good maybe if you're posting on platforms like Instagram. I could change the whole style of the video by selecting a color palette and changing the fonts as well. Do things like change the background color and also animation that we'll look at in more detail later. In the middle of the screen, that main part there is called the canvas. That's where we're actually going to build our video and put all of the different elements like text and shapes and other videos and pictures and so on. On the right hand side, there's another toolbar with all of the different options for things that we can add to the canvas. And so we're going to work through those during this guide. And at the bottom of the screen is the timeline, just like you see in every video editor. And in Vids, the way this works is by using scenes. So this first white box that we can see at the bottom here is the first scene and I can click and drag to change the length of these scenes as well or I can click the plus button on the right to create a new scene and then you can see we can add transitions between them which we'll look at later. And I'll also show you how to adjust the timing so that you can have different elements appear at different times as well. Today, I'm going to create a video all about London and so we're going to start with something super simple which is just adding some text to the screen. To do that, I go to the toolbar on the right hand side and just click text and you can see I can click to add the text. It's a plain text box at the top here or I can choose from a bunch of pre-made blocks here as well. So for example, if I was making a video that included speakers, I could click here and there are a few examples. These are all editable and I could drag those in. I'm going to just click to add a title like this. Remember a moment ago in the menu at the top, if I wanted to, I could click to customize the styles and it's using the default font from those styles here. So if you have a font that you want to use based on your brand, you can click here and choose from any Google font. I'm actually going to scroll down and choose a font called Inter Tight like this and then you can see that automatically changed the title here. So later on in the video creation process, if I change this font, it would go and change all of the titles to that same font I select in the styles here. I'm going to close that styles panel and give this an actual title. I'm going to put Visit London, center it like this and let's make it bold as well. So you can see when I select an element on the canvas, that toolbar at the top changes so that all of the tools are related to the thing I have selected on the canvas. Now I don't just want to have this on a plain white background. I want to find a video that I can put behind this and I don't have a video of London to hand so I'm going to click on the stock button on the right hand side here. And in here are loads of stock assets from videos to images, there's music here as well, different animated stickers, sound effects, GIFs and things from Google Images, too. And you've got permission to use these as you need to. So under search all stock, I'm just going to search for London and I'm going to click on videos and I can mouse over the videos to get previews of what they are as well. I quite like this one that's a time lapse. So I can either click or I can click and drag to move this onto the canvas. So I'm going to click it like this. It's dropped it on the canvas over here and then I can move it around like so. And I'm going to resize it to fit the whole canvas like this. Now I want this to appear behind the text. So to do that, I'm going to right click on that video, go to order and then choose send to back like this and now the text is on top of it. But that text isn't particularly readable on top of this video. So I'm just going to move it down very slightly. I'm actually also going to add a shape. So on the right hand side, on that menu again, I can click shapes and there are tons of different shapes here as well to choose from. There really are loads of options in Google Vids to create anything that you need. I'm going to click the square or the rectangle shape over here and I'm going to click and drag it so that it kind of goes across the whole screen like this. I'm going to change the line color to transparent and I'm going to change the fill color over here to white like so. Again, it's in the wrong place. I want it to be behind the text. So I'm going to right click on it and then go to order and choose send backward like this. Going to make it slightly bigger so that it gives the text a bit of breathing room. The problem is it's now blocking out most of that video. So I want to change the transparency. Unfortunately, there's not just a quick and easy transparency option once you've got a shape. You actually have to change the color and add transparency but it's well hidden. So I'm going to click on the fill color again and this time go to custom. I'm going to click this plus button where it says add custom color. And now you can see that I have a transparency toggle like this so I can go to zero to 100. So I'm going to go roughly in the middle about 50 here and click okay. I think that helps the text stand out but also means I can see the video in the background. Now I want to see what this looks like so far so I'm going to click and drag the play head on my timeline all the way to the beginning and then I can click the play button. It looks like this and I probably only want that scene to last 3 seconds. So I'm going to go to the end of this scene here. At the moment it's 16 seconds cuz it's expanded to be the length of the video that I added in but I'm going to click and drag that down to 3 seconds like this. And at the moment, the writing is just a bit static so I want to make that a bit more visual as well. So what I'm going to do is click on the shape back on my canvas here. And when I click on any element on the timeline, I'm going to see this option here, this kind of symbol with the different circles. That's for animations. So click on that and I've got a few different types of animations that I can add to this. You can see when I've selected this, it's animating the object here but you can add animations to the whole scene if you want to as well. For now, let's stick on object and I have different ways that I can animate an object. It can be an enter and exit animation so when it comes in and when it leaves the screen or an animation that happens on a loop, something like maybe it just floats nicely or bounces throughout. Now I don't actually want it to exit the scene. I don't think it needs to do that in 3 seconds. I just want it to enter. I think we're just going to start for the shape just to have it fade in like this. You see when I mouse over, it previews the effect as well. But at the moment, it's an enter and an exit. So I'm going to do two things. The first is I'm going to reduce the duration to about half a second just by clicking and dragging. And at the bottom of this panel here, you can see it says separate enter and exit animation. So I click that toggle and you see now it's broken out the enter and exit animations at the top here. So I can choose them separately. So it will fade to enter the screen and the exit is none which is exactly what I want. So let me play the timeline again down here to see. Nice. Now I want the text to fade in in the same way. So I just click on the text on my canvas like this. Click that same animation button and you can see the animations look like slightly different options for text but they're mostly the same. I've got this fade option here. Going to do the same thing here and drag the duration down to half a second. And I've got a few other options. So can I animate the whole text box, animate it by paragraph if I have lots of writing, by word or even by letter. I just want to animate the whole thing. I want it all to fade in at once. And again, I want to separate those enter and exit animations like this and then just make sure that for exit, it says none up here. So now if I move my play head back and play, that fades in nicely at the beginning. So that's my opening scene done. Let's add another scene here then. And in this scene, I want someone to appear on screen to explain what's going to be coming in the video. But let's imagine I'm a bit camera shy. That's where avatars come in. And so on the right hand side, on that menu again, I'm going to click avatar and you can see that I can enter a script for this scene. So I need to give the avatar something to say. So I might type something like, "In this video, we're going to learn about the best things to do when you visit London." And at the bottom here, I can choose my avatar. So if I click change, there are a few that I can choose from. And if I mouse over, I'll also get a preview of their voice. >> you select makes a difference in how viewers respond to your video. The voice you select makes a difference in how viewers respond The voice you select makes a difference in how viewers respond your video. >> Underneath the realistic looking avatars, there are also some 3D animated and cartoon ones as well. I think I want to go for something realistic. I'm going to choose Jayda. >> you select And then I click select. And if I click preview, it's going to create the preview >> video, we're going to learn about the best things to do when you visit London. So there's the avatar reading the script. It tells me at the bottom that it will sync the lips once I actually choose to generate. So I'm going to click generate here and it's going to go to work and create that avatar reading my script that I can use in my scene. So there's the completed avatar. I can click the play button to play it. >> we're going to learn about the best things to do when you visit London. So that's pretty good but the problem with avatars is they're just sat statically in one location like this. It looks like Jayda is in an office or something. But now if I move over to the VO option at the top of the screen here, I can actually prompt to have my avatar do something different in a location of my choice. So the first thing I'm going to do is click avatar here and choose Jayda again. And then I need to write a prompt. Now, you could prompt for anything. It doesn't have to be an avatar. Maybe you wanted a clip with a treasure chest beaming with gold, but you just don't have the right thing when you've looked in the stock list, so get it created by VEO. What I'm going to do though is say the avatar walks into the phone booth and picks up the phone, then delivers the script to the camera. The script is and then I'm just going to put the same words in speech marks like this. And just under the prompt here, I've got a button where I can click to add up to three images that are going to help it generate that video. So, I click this reference image that I've got from Unsplash here, and then I click generate, and it's going to take a few minutes and then create that clip for me. Let's see what we get. Couple of minutes later, here is the finished clip. Let's mouse over to see what we've got. Every clip that VEO creates is 8 seconds long, which is a bit of a limitation, but it will work for most things that you need. So, let's mouse over. In this video, we're going to learn about the best things to do when you visit London. I'm actually really impressed by that. So, if I want to use it, I can click insert like this. And you see, when I do this, I've got the option to insert a new scene or insert a new scene and do insert in current scene, which is what I'm going to do. Obviously, I don't want both clips on here, so I'm going to click to move that out of the way, delete the one underneath it just by using backspace, and then putting this on the screen here. Now, I'm going to move my playhead all the way to the left. I've closed the panel on the right-hand side to give myself some more space, and then I'm going to click the play button to see the whole video so far. All right. One thing you might want to do when you're working with different scenes down the bottom here is add transitions between them. There's a button here that appears between my first scene here and the second one here. So, I click on that button, and it shows me the different transitions I can choose from. If I hover my mouse over one of the transitions, it previews it in the canvas. So, I mouse over, decide which looks best. I quite like a simple dissolve actually, so just fades from one into the other. I'm going to click that. I can change the duration. Let's say only 3/4 of a second like this. Now, I'm going to add another scene, and in this scene, I actually want to show a map and talk through the different things on that map. And so, that's where recording in Google Vids comes into play. On the right-hand side, I've got the record option here, and I can write myself a script here so that I can either read that out and see it on a teleprompter in a moment, or later on, I might want to use that script to generate an automatic voiceover or use an avatar again like we have already. I'm not going to worry about writing a script, but you can if you're not sure what you're going to say, and it will help you stay on track. At the bottom of the screen here, though, I'm going to click on the camera option, and I can see I've got these few different things I can choose from. First is just camera, so just be recording my face like you're seeing now. The second is camera and screen, so it will also offer to record my screen. The third is just my screen, and then the fourth is just voiceover, so it would just record the sound of your voice. Now, I'm going to choose camera and screen here and click start recording. And when it opens the recorder, it's going to ask you what screen you want to share, so you could choose your entire screen or just one of the tabs you've got open. I have Google Maps open in another tab, so I'm going to click to share that. You've got the option to also share the audio from that tab that you might want to enable. And when you click share, it's then going to move your image down into this picture-in-picture mode here. And the very first time you use this recorder, you might find that you need to say allow on every visit or allow this time for the page to be able to access your camera and your microphone. Let me switch back to the main recording screen here so we can see a couple of other options. At the bottom, next to the record button, I've got a button to show my script. So, if I'd written a script in that section earlier, it would appear here like a teleprompter, or I can click this edit pencil icon and change the script whilst I'm here. I can click that button again to hide it. And then, if I want to, maybe you've got a messy background, you can click the visual effects button on the right-hand side and then choose to blur your background as well, and it's going to then blur the background of your camera. Or you could choose from one of the virtual backgrounds, and there are more options for appearance to change things like color as well. I'm happy as it is right now, so I'm just going to close that pane here. Then, once you're ready, you're going to click the record button. It's going to count down from three, and then it will be recording. So, I could jump over to my Maps tab now and say, "Right in the center of London, we have Buckingham Palace, which is a must-visit if you only have a day in London. And then, why not consider going along to the Tower of London and then taking a boat tour along the Thames." Once you're done, because of this picture-in-picture option here, I could click the stop button here. Or if you don't see that for some reason, just go back to that other tab and click stop here. Then, I can click to preview that recording I just did to make sure it's okay. I've got the option to redo it with this refresh arrow if I didn't like it, or I can click insert. When I insert it, you see it's created a new scene for me, and in that scene is both the screen recording in the background and my camera recording in the foreground here. Now, it might be that you want the camera recording to appear for less time than the screen recording. That's where the timing option in the timeline becomes really helpful. So, there's an option on the left here called show timing, so I click on here, and now you can see it shows me the different layers that are in this scene. The first one is the video recording, and then the second one is the screen recording. If I click and drag these, you'll notice that they're linked together. So, I'm going to right-click first to then unlink them. And now, I could make my video recording shorter than the screen recording. So, maybe I want the screen to take up more space first. At the moment, it doesn't quite fit the whole canvas either, so maybe I want to just make that slightly bigger like this so that it covers the whole thing. And so, if I play that now, there's not going to be any audio to start with because the audio is attached to my video. and say, "Right in the center of London, we have So, there you can see how we can manipulate both of those things as well. And if I click on the video recording, I can obviously move that around. So, maybe I think it might be better in the top corner like this. Google also just released the Google Vids screen recorder Chrome extension, which means you can be on any website like Google Maps, and then in the top right of Google Chrome, if you've got this extension installed, you could just click, and it will start a recording straight away and then go and send that into a Google Vids project that you're working on. I'll put a link in the description for you to go and add that Chrome extension if that would be helpful. It's really helpful if you're doing things like tutorials. I'm going to close that tab, and go back to my Google Vids project here. I mentioned earlier that you could also use AI-generated voiceovers. Maybe if you're a bit shy to record your own voice, just like you did with avatars, you can put a script in here, and then an AI voice will create the voiceover for you. Now, I think we're nearly there in terms of actually completing our video. One last thing that might help with a little bit of ambience is some music. So, on the right-hand side, the first place I can look is back on that stock option. If you remember earlier, we saw that we can click on music, and there's lots of royalty-free music here that you could put in. So, you can just click play to preview each one. If I wanted to use that, I could just click the plus to insert it. Or if you can't find anything you like in the stock selection, you can go over to the music option on the toolbar here as well, and just describe what you would like, and Gemini will create a piece of music for your video. So, I might say something like instrumental background music for a video about London that represents the diversity and vibrance of the city. And that's not really describing sound, but let's see what we get. You could be very specific about the types of instruments that you want to hear or anything else. I'm going to leave it at 30 seconds. That's all I need for my video right now, and click generate. Let's listen to what we've got. >> [music] >> That sounds fun to me, so I'm going to click insert. And you see, it inserts the music, but it's put it where my playhead is. So, I'm just going to click and drag that music all the way to the left-hand side of my timeline like this to start at the beginning, and I'm going to resize this last scene so that my whole video is only 30 seconds long in total as well. Now, if I just move over to this second scene here and click play on the timeline, In this video, [music] we're going to learn about the best things to do when you visit London. I'm actually really impressed by that. So, if I want to use it, I can click insert like this. And you see, when I do this, I've got the option to insert a new scene or insert a new scene and do insert in current scene, which is what I'm going to do. Obviously, I don't want both clips on here, so I'm going to click to move that out of the way, delete the one underneath it just by using backspace, and then putting this on the screen here. Now, I'm going to move my playhead all the way to the left. I've closed the panel on the right-hand side to give myself some more space, and then I'm going to click the play button to see the whole video so far. All right. One thing you might want to do when you're working with different scenes down the bottom here is add transitions between them. There's a button here that appears between my first scene here and the second one here. So, I click on that button, and it shows me the different transitions I can choose from. If I hover my mouse over one of the transitions, it previews it in the canvas. So, I mouse over, decide which looks best. I quite like a simple dissolve actually, so just fades from one into the other. I'm going to click that. I can change the duration. Let's say only 3/4 of a second like this. Now, I'm going to add another scene, and in this scene, I actually want to show a map and talk through the different things on that map. And so, that's where recording in Google Vids comes into play. On the right-hand side, I've got the record option here, and I can write myself a script here so that I can either read that out and see it on a teleprompter in a I might want to use that script voiceover or use an avatar again like we have already. I'm not going to worry about writing a script, but you can if you're not sure what you're going to say, and it will help you stay on track. At the bottom of the screen here, though, I'm going to click on the camera option, and I can see I've got these few different things I can choose from. First is just camera, so just be recording my face like you're seeing now. The second is camera and screen, so it will also offer to record my screen. The third is just my screen, and then the fourth is just voiceover, so it would just record the sound of your voice. Now, I'm going to choose camera and screen here and click start recording. And when it opens the recorder, it's going to ask you what screen you want to share, so you could choose your words as well. This is so easy now, and so you could actually just upload a video from your phone of you talking to your camera, make sure it's in vertical in Google Vids, click the captions button, and you can easily add these lovely styled captions to your video. So, we've created this whole video from scratch with a few different scenes. We've added animations. Now, all that we need to do is either share it with someone to collaborate on it with, or download this so then we can put it somewhere else. So, let's start by looking at sharing. If you've used Google Docs or any other tools in Google Workspace before, it's exactly the same. I just click the share button at the top of the screen here. Because it's untitled, it's going to prompt me to give it a name, so I'm going to say all about London like this and save it. And now, I just get the same sharing prompt that I'm used to seeing anywhere else. So, I could type someone's name in to share it with them here, and decide whether they're an editor, a commenter, or a viewer just like normal, and I can leave a message here for them as well. And they will be able to collaborate on this just like we can collaborate on a Google document or a spreadsheet. Then, once you're done, I really recommend clicking the play button on the top right of the screen so that you can watch the whole thing uninterrupted, full screen, like this. I'm not going to do that now. You don't need to see this whole finished video, but it is worth doing as a step each time. Then, the last thing you're going to want to do is either download or export this somewhere that you want to save it. So, if I go to the file menu at the top of the screen here, I've got a couple of different options. The first is to download it. I can download an MP4 file. You can save that anywhere you like, and it will just work when you upload it to platforms like YouTube. Or, you can export it directly to your Google Drive, so it will save it for you in Google Drive. No need to separately download and then upload it. Or, a new feature is that you can actually click to export this directly to YouTube from inside Google Vids, which is a big time-saver if you're creating maybe tutorial videos that you want to also release publicly, or just have them unlisted on YouTube for people to access. You can do that right here. I'm going to go to download, and click MP4 video. And it was going to take a moment. It's going to process that whole video, and then download it to my computer. And you can see it's done that in my downloads at the top right of the screen here. So, that is your complete guide to Google Vids for 2026. And if you use Workspace for work, you're probably going to like this video about automation inside a new tool called Workspace Studio. If you've got any questions, you can leave them in the comments below. I really appreciate your time. Give me a thumbs up if you like this, and I'll see you in the next one.